The invention relates to a pharmaceutical medicine in unit galenical formulation for chewing or sucking and including elemental iron as its active principle.
Such a medicine is indicated in preventing or correcting conditions associated with a shortage of iron or with an iron imbalance. These troubles are treated by supplying elemental iron in the form of ferrous salts (Fe2+) or ferric salts (Fe3+), although ferric salts are less used.
When these iron salts are administered per os, a difficulty lies in the taste being disagreeable when in doses sufficient to obtain the desired therapeutic effects, i.e. doses of the order of several milligrams or several tens of milligrams per tablet (ignoring the specific case of multiple food additives and other mineral or vitamin supplements having an iron content that is very low and therefore of no effect on taste).
That is why medicines containing an iron salt as active principle are generally presented in the form of a tablet that is coated (sugar-coated) or provided with a skin so that the problem of the disagreeable taste of iron salts does not arise for such medicines.
One of the objects of the present invention is to propose a particular formulation of a medicine containing an iron salt making a tablet for chewing or sucking, which formulation is galenically acceptable, industrially manufacturable, stable, and above all of acceptable taste.
To this end, the medicine of the invention comprises an iron salt, not less than two polyols, a binding agent, a lubricating agent, and a flavoring agent.